HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania has done a poor job overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal homeland security grants, making it hard to evaluate if the spending has improved the state's disaster-response capabilities, three reports found.

The reports said recordkeeping has been so inadequate that state emergency officials, who must approve local requests for the money, cannot say whether equipment that has been purchased is still in use or where it is.

More than $400 million in federal money has been committed to Pennsylvania since Sept. 11, 2001. About half has been spent, the bulk of it on equipment.

The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, the reports concluded, was ill-prepared to manage all the money once it began flowing in.

The reports were prepared by the state Legislative Budget and Finance Committee, the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a private firm, James Lee Witt Associates of Washington, D.C. They were issued in October and November but received little attention then.

The state's new director of emergency management, Gen. Robert P. French, did not dispute the findings. But he told The Associated Press he is confident local emergency response officials have, in general, put the money to good use in spite of oversight failures at the state level.

"We've got qualified first-responders out there," French said. "You're presuming they're going to do the right thing, and I think by and large, from what I've seen so far, by and large they have. But we can certainly do better."

French, who left a senior position with the Pennsylvania National Guard to join PEMA, said a private firm will be hired to create a computerized inventory of purchases and that he is working to devise a strategy for building a more efficient, better-trained emergency response force.

The administration of Gov. Ed Rendell also has begun restructuring the agency since a failed response to a snowstorm last February that left motorists stranded overnight on highways.

In their reports, the authors paint a picture of a state emergency management overwhelmed by the job of managing all the homeland security grants, with neither the staff nor training to effectively administer the program.

As a result of those shortcomings, nine regional task forces often dictated what to buy and were left to manage the equipment without much direction from the state.

The reports are rife with examples of spotty oversight — for example, PEMA skipped visits to check on equipment inventories around the state.

The grants are to be used to help firefighters, police and local officials respond to prevent or respond to natural disasters, accidents or acts of terrorism, and can be used for everything from multimillion-dollar radio communication systems to Tyvek boot covers. The grants also may be used to cover administrative and training costs, but not to construct buildings, pay fire or police salaries, or buy weapons.